Thursday

Jul 29, 2010 at 12:01 AMJul 29, 2010 at 8:03 PM

Taunton Police Chief Edward Walsh wasn’t surprised last year when a state police unit assigned to the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office showed interest in a collaborative effort to target heroin and cocaine dealers within the Silver City.

Taunton Police Chief Edward Walsh wasn’t surprised last year when a state police unit assigned to the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office showed interest in a collaborative effort to target heroin and cocaine dealers within the Silver City.

“They always wanted to do something in DeWert similar to United Front in New Bedford,” Walsh said, referring to a 2008 anti-drug operation focusing on that city’s United Front Homes housing complex.

The effort — Operation RF Diesel — culminated over a two-day period last week and has resulted in at least 60 drug-related arrests.

It was an investigation the likes of which Taunton has never experienced, Walsh said.

“We’d never done a drug operation with the state police before,” said Walsh, who described the operation as having been “the largest coordinated action that we’ve seen.”

The impetus for Operation RF (Restore Fairfax) Diesel, according to the DA’s office, was a fatal heroin overdose within Fairfax Gardens, a public housing apartment complex on DeWert Avenue with a reputation for being a hub of illegal drug activity.

The word “diesel” is street slang for heroin, said DA spokesman Gregg Miliote.

Collaborative efforts

Taunton and state police, Walsh said, previously had collaborated on murder investigations. But when it came to undercover drug busts and warrant arrests, Taunton police essentially operated alone.

Walsh said the city of Taunton, and Fairfax Gardens in particular, has come to be associated with the availability of cheap yet potent heroin. As a result, “people from all over the area” travel here to buy their dope, he said.

Making matters all the more difficult, Walsh said, was that dealers in Fairfax Gardens had “a very sophisticated operation for selling drugs.”

Police Detective Peter Corr, who was an integral part of RF Diesel, said he’d learned from state police that customers were coming into Taunton from as far away as New Hampshire, Vermont, Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard to buy heroin and crack cocaine at Fairfax Gardens.

Although all of the operation’s arrests included street-level dealers, as opposed to major
suppliers, Walsh said the cumulative effect was that “they were moving serious weight in Taunton.”

A new approach

Walsh said he realized Taunton police needed a new approach to sweeping the drug dealers out of DeWert Avenue after a series of independent raids last September and October failed to yield the desired effect.

“They were ineffective to an extent,” said Walsh, a 22-year Taunton police veteran who at the time was still a captain in charge of the detective unit.

He credits state police Detective Lt. Stephen O’Reilly for having played a central role in planning the eventual success of the Fairfax Gardens operation.

The most serious criminal charges stemming from Operation RF Diesel were heroin trafficking, with quantities ranging from 14 to 144 grams per individual.

Traffickers, who typically face mandatory prison terms exceeding 10 years, depending on the amount of drugs confiscated, were and will remain a target, Walsh said.

The difficulty with DeWert

The physical layout of Fairfax Gardens, and the fact that it is situated within a cul-de-sac with just a single entrance and exit, has always made drug enforcement difficult, Walsh said.

Drug dealers there employ lookouts and will hide their stash in nearby woods and grassy areas if they think police are on the way, he said.

“The physical structure makes it challenging,” Walsh said. “It’s a very closed-off facility. It’s been a hard nut for us to crack for years.”

Those factors, he said, have bred an air of brazenness among drug dealers.

Walsh recounted the amazement of one experienced undercover officer from an outside agency who said he had never before encountered anything like Fairfax Gardens.

“He thought it was an open-air drug market. He said he’d never seen anything like it,” Walsh said. “He was astounded.”

That particular undercover cop, Walsh said, had experience in anti-drug operations in larger urban areas such as Chelsea, Revere and Boston.

But the cop said he couldn’t believe how open and flagrant and unconcerned about police the dealers in Fairfax were, Walsh said.

Not a cheap operation

Walsh said undercover Taunton and state police spent “a lot of money just on buys” — money he said that might not be fully recouped through forfeiture of property.

He would only describe that amount as having been in the five-figure range.

Bristol County State Police Sgt. George Williams said approximately $20,000 funded by the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy was provided for the implementation of Operation RF Diesel.

That money, which was administered by the New England High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, or HIDTA, was used for “the investigative process and interdiction,” the latter of which included state police highway stops, he said.

Impact unknown

Walsh said the jury is still out as to whether Operation RF Diesel left a significant dent in the heroin and crack cocaine trade, that through the years has become part of the city’s landscape.

“To a degree we accomplished what we set out to do, but we still don’t know how long of an impact it will have,” he said. “We’re still evaluating its effectiveness.”

The city’s war on drugs, meanwhile, remains “a work in progress,” he said.

Corr was somewhat more cynical, saying that other drug dealers from outside the city are always waiting in the wings to take the place of those who have been rounded up.

Notwithstanding such cynicism, Walsh said he’s more than pleased with Operation RF Diesel’s success — if nothing else than that it shows his department’s eagerness and ability to partner with other law enforcement agencies.

“I’m overjoyed with the degree of success we had,” Walsh said. “We have dwindling resources, and we need to leverage the resources of other agencies to help us with our problems.”

He encourages residents of Fairfax Gardens to either provide police with tips via the Tip Line at 508-824-5493, or by logging on to the Taunton Police Department’s website (tauntonpd.com) where he’s installed a service for leaving messages and phone numbers that he guarantees is completely anonymous.

“No one deserves to live in fear,” Walsh said.

Contact Charles Winokoor at cwinokoor@tauntongazette.com.

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